One of the top streaming shows during the COVID lockdowns was Waterloo Road (cue incredulity!). The series had first begun airing in 2006 but was voraciously consumed during lockdown. It ended in 2015 but became a hit again during the pandemic, with 45 million streams in 2021 making it iPlayer's fourth most popular series of that year, ahead of Doctor Who, Death In Paradise and RuPaul's Drag Race UK.
I’ll admit to that first series’ screening back in 2006 being a ‘guilty pleasure’ as I watched (sometimes through my fingers) and tried not to see parallels with the school I was leading at the time!
With my EdTech hat on now, the reboot has returned to my list of viewing affections (when I’m not rewatching Ted Lasso…)
The current series has revealed that – in no particular order of calamity -
- the school doesn’t have a content management system for its digital signage (or possibly no-one who can use it…)
- those same digital signage screens are always on … no sustainability policy in place here… with only a logo displayed (until the Head’s PA spends an INSET day watching the tennis on there!)
- there’s no data specialist (and the headteacher has no idea) as her assistant is asked to ‘do all that magic with the pie charts’
- no-one uses edtech to teach because no-one was worried about that when there was a whole-school power cut
- there seems to be no mobile phone policy – though the Behaviour Unit did have an ‘hand in your phone’ policy and box
- complex passwords – and cyber-security training - haven’t reached Waterloo Road… one teacher (Coral) letting a pupil see her type in ‘coral 123’ as her password … later to be used to steal money from a charity fund…
- no ed-tech specialist was involved with the set dressing as the interactive whiteboards were sometimes situated off-centre and behind teacher desks …
- the school has changed interactive whiteboard supplier since the earlier series … it was Promethean and is now Smart… and still no-one uses them..
- there’s no clear strategy for teacher devices as there are both PCs and laptops in use by them in classrooms
- one teacher borrowed a laptop from another… and it broke… so another fixed it and bemoaned a lack of IT support
- then the Trust distributed tablets because they want a paperless Waterloo Road…
- students are intent on making mischief on social media – fake profiles created for teachers and a viral video filmed in a corridor of a teacher ‘losing it’
Is Art imitating Life…? Well, if anyone wants a quick clip to illustrate an EdTech issue in schools, then Waterloo Road wouldn’t be a bad place to start…
If the next series isn’t yet written I reckon that RAAC-displacement, AI and a complete ban on mobile phones (leading to a student strike!) are definitely in the offing.
School life – and EdTech – are obviously far more complex than WR makes them out to be, but if I can help schools not to find themselves imitating Waterloo Road… then I’d count that as a ‘win’!
